Ministry of Education
Significant impact of sanitation and socio-economy on improving water quality and human health: Progress towards Sustainable Development Goals, says IIT Kharagpur Study
Kolkata, October 24, 2019
A team of researchers from IIT Kharagpur has connected the links between the influence of economic growth in reducing fecal pathogens in groundwater which is considered to be one of the key factors causing water-borne diseases across India.
Over the last twenty-six year to 2016, about 15.5% of the total deaths are caused due to water borne diseases like Diarrhoea. While the study reported the elevated of fecal coliform concentration in potable groundwater in rural regions across India, it also made first-time observations on significant reduction of faecal pathogen concentration in the spatially variable groundwater from 2002 to 2017.
“Looking beyond the country globally, more than one-third of the total country’s population, living in economically stressed areas of Africa and South Asia still do not have access to basic sanitation, and more than 1 billion still opt for open defecation. Until recently, India has more than 500 million open-defecating population resulting unsafe disposal of fecal waste to nearby drinking water sources poses a serious environmental crisis and public health concern,” says Prof. Abhijit Mukherjee, faculty at the School of Environmental Science and Engineering and Dept. of Geology and Geophysics at IIT Kharagpur who led the research project.
However, in recent years, sanitation development to achieve Sustainable Development Goals  has been encouraged across India by implementing Clean India  Mission, but their effect to groundwater quality and human health are yet unquantified. For the first time, researchers studied long term, high-spatial resolution measurements of fecal coliform concentration  and acute diarrheal cases, which are significantly influenced by potential impact of sanitation development and satellite-based nightlight, a predictor for economic development. The study data covered almost last three decades to delineate the long-term improvement trends of groundwater quality across India, as consequence of development.
“A uniqueness in this study to determine economic development was instead of GDP or other economic growth data, we have used satellite-based nightlight  information from NASA for the period 1992-2013 which was used to investigate the statistical trends and causal relationships. In most areas’ economic development, suggested by increasing satellite-based nightlight correlated to the reduction in faecal coliform concentration and alleviation of water quality. While, sanitation and economic development can improve human health, poor education level and improper human practices can potentially affect water-borne diseases loads and thus health in parts of India.” explained Srimanti Duttagupta, Ph.D. scholar at IIT Kharagpur, second author of the research paper which has come out recently based on this study.
Numerical and statistical analyses were performed on aforesaid culled datasets to understand the efficiency of development in alleviating the water quality and public health, and relationship with economic development. Enhanced alleviation of groundwater quality and human health have been observed since 2014, however, the goal of completely fecal-pollution free, clean drinking water is yet to be achieved, Prof. Mukherjee remarked, however needs more data to confirm. “Nevertheless, in areas with inferior water quality, improper human practices outweigh economic development in affecting human health,” he added.
It has been observed that very high population density deteriorates the quality of water in certain areas. Problem of overpopulation and slums is an intricate problem which is reflected on all life aspects in countries like India. Different statistical analyses conducted in this study showed about 3.09 % decrease in fecal coliform concentration and 2.69% decrease in acute diarrheal cases per year for last three decades. Groundwater quality with respect to fecal coliform concentration and acute diarrheal cases generally reduced in most areas of India, and has been mostly caused by sanitation development, urbanization and related land-use changes.
The researchers opined that societal practices, poor human practices, use and disuse and believes are mostly related to lower literacy rate. In turn, these results lack of awareness and encourage malpractice on sanitation, eventually leading to increased faecal waste into drinking water sourced to groundwater.
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